A Moment of Your Time
by V.Evergreen
Summary: It only took a moment for Patrick Jane to realise that he lived almost exclusively in the past with no hope for a future. It took less than that to realise he wanted a present.


He couldn't even remember why he did it. Only that she had shouting at him for his latest transgression on the case when it suddenly happened. In one fluid motion he took a step forward and kissed her.

She stood stiff with suprise but he barely noticed. After all, it was a moment he had been wondering about for quite sometime now.

Would she kiss him back?

Would she hit him?

In the end there was only one way to find out.

Without him realising, one of his hands rested on her arm while the other ghosted past her cheek. He knew, deep down, that this was going to change them forever. Whether she chose to acknowledge it or not he had crossed a line that there was no going back from.

When she pulled away it was not unexpected, though he did not step back. If this was his only chance to be close to her then he wasn't going to waste it with unnecessary distance.

Slowly, and completely afraid of what he would see he opened his eyes. Narrowed green eyes stared back at him. Unconsciously, he braced himself for the small fist that was likely to find his nose within the next second. No such impact came.

Instead Teresa Lisbon stood staring him down as if he were a particularly interesting case. There was a beat of silence before Jane felt the natural urge to start talking if only to break the atmosphere. It only fully dawned on him what he had risked. Ten years of uncondiotial friendship hung between them. A decade chanced against a whim, a flight of fancy.

His own eyes narrowed at the thought. This was no flight of fancy, at least not to him. The woman who stood before him was the self same woman who kept him sane and, on many occasions, alive. The silence continued to unnerve him. He opened his mouth to talk, perhaps even try and talk his way out of this but she beat him to it,

"Why did you do that?" She asked curiously. There was no anger in her voice just honest curiosity. He wanted to answer but it felt as if every word dried up in his mouth. "Was it a trick?" She asked.

"No!" He said quickly, words coming back only out of sheer desperation to tell her that this was him at his most honest, "Of course it-"

"Then you meant it?" She asked he voice sounding thinner. More strained.

A wry smile twisted his lips. He'd been a fool to think that this would have anything other than heartbreak and complication to offer them both. If he were honest, something that did happen occasionally, he could see why she would be the first one to back away from him. One of the downfalls to having was a best friend was most definitely the fact that they were your best friend for a reason, he mused. They knew things about you, things that you didn't necessarily want them to know. She knew that he was a man who had lived in the past for far too long with no real hope for his future.

"Don't worry about it," he started glibly, forcing a smile that felt brittle on his face, "I was just trying something new-" He hated himself for it but miserably he thought that at least he could probably salvage the situation, make sure they were still friends at least.

He dared look back at Lisbon's eyes only to see them narrowed at him, in anger this time and rightly so. This time she did hit him. On the arm and not with nearly as much strength as he knew that she possessed.

"I thought I told you I could always tell when you were lying." She muttered. If he had time to register the shock he no doubt would of, but by the time he had registered her words she had already grabbed the lapels of his jacket and pulled him back down to her.

Later, he reasoned, they would sit down and talk about what this meant for both of them, how it would work, if it would work. But until then, for once, he was completely content to live purely in the present.

...

A/N-

thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it! If you did, or even if you didn't, I'd love to know what you think, thanks- VE


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